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APPROACH TO "FURTHER-REASONABLE-PROGRESS" TO ATTAIN WATER QUALITY STANDARDS
Citation:
Turner, B. G., C. J. Arnett, T P. O'Connor*, R. Weaver, AND M. Boner. APPROACH TO "FURTHER-REASONABLE-PROGRESS" TO ATTAIN WATER QUALITY STANDARDS. Presented at WEF 2001 Collection Systems Odyssey: Integrating O&M and Wet Weather Solutions, Bellevue, WA, July 08 - 11, 2001.
Impact/Purpose:
To inform the public.
Description:
Watershed managers in urban areas in the US are pursuing optimum strategies or plans for managing wastewater treatment plants, stormwater systems, sanitary sewer overflows (SSO) and combined sewer overflows (CSO). Often these strategies are based on an iterative process or a "further-reasonable-progress" approach to attaining water quality standards. Keys to this concept include demonstration of sustainable watershed solutions and continued waterbody monitoring and assessment. Solutions can involve flow attenuation and public amenity strategies as well as impervious area contaminant controls. These types of solutions represent cost-effective, further-reasonable-progress. Refined water quality use designations and site-specific water quality standard criteria can be the result of such monitoring and demonstrated improvements. Monitoring will provide the basis for TMDL allocations including phased TMDL, a framework for this iterative approach. The Columbus Water Works has spent the last decade developing a sound-science water quality program involving CSO, wastewater systems optimization, source water protection and watershed management. Success of the program has relied on combining water quality improvements with community projects and education programs. The $95M Columbus investment to implement CSO controls includes demonstration programs that have collected a significant amount of urban and rural wet-weather and biological data over the last four years. This project is analyzing the data under the guidance of the WERF peer review process and is attempting to define transferable methodologies for watershed monitoring and modeling within a TMDL or source water protection framework. Monitoring includes sampling throughout the runoff hydrograph and continuous multiple sensor, flow and rainfall measurements. The Columbus program is also evaluating control technology performance and achievable environmental benefits and costs towards protecting site-specific beneficial use. Preliminary findings from the technology-testing program indicate that wet-weather pollutants can be cost-effectively processed. Recommendations of both the technology demonstration and watershed studies indicate that water shed demonstrations are necessary and that their focus should be two fold: 1) to optimize the drainage system to attenuate flows, and 2) to remove contaminants at all appropriate locations.